Srinagar, Aug. 3 -- Before the conference on nature-based solutions began on Monday afternoon, the lights slightly softened inside a hall at the Islamic University of Science and Technology as a film on the Jhelum started to play.

It showed the river the way few people ever get to see it: through decades of floods, silt, and shifting banks that have shaped and battered this valley again and again.

Prof. Shakil Ahmad Romshoo, the university's vice chancellor and the film's director, sat watching his own work with the rest of the audience, and by the time it ended, the mood in the room had already changed.

That documentary, titled Geo-Historical Journey of the Jhelum in Kashmir, became the opening statement for a much bigger event: a fou...